


Different Ways to be Human

by Alsike



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Coming Out, Don't Judge Me, F/F, Gen, Self-Discovery, The Alien Experience, i have a concussion, this was supposed to be funny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 17:15:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10644426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alsike/pseuds/Alsike
Summary: Alex's coming out was a revelation--suddenly something that had always been there was visible now, and seeing it made everything different.Kara has always done her best seeing of humanity through Alex's eyes. But this time, trying to see through Alex's eyes makes her wonder how she sees herself.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I really do have a concussion, and I probably shouldn't be writing. But I am, so I'm sorry if I lapse into incoherence.

Sometimes, things come upon you like a revelation--Alex had defined the term for her back when her English was still a little shaky, "you know, like if someone's put a sheet over something, so you don't know what's under it, and then whoosh, they take it off, and then there it is, beneath the sheet!"

Only then do you see the truth. The vague, unidentifiable shape is now something real, present, and undeniable.

Other times, things creep up on you. If you'd turned to look, you might have been able to see them coming before they got to you. When they finally show up, they're like, "Surprise!" and you're like, "What? That was there all along?"

Alex coming out was a revelation--but not because Kara had ever assumed she was straight. In retrospect she thought that if someone had asked, "Hey, does Alex like girls?" She probably would have said, "I don't know. She's never said she doesn't." If it had been a cute girl who seemed to be asking out of personal interest, she might have been even more enthusiastic. Alex could come off as pretty standoffish, and any time a non-douchebag showed interest in her, Kara became Super-Wingman. Seriously, a cute girl who liked Alex, Kara would have pulled out all the stops, accidental meetings at nice clubs, suspicious abandonments on movie dates, every trick in the book.

But no one had asked. And so when Alex, looking shaky and wide open and not herself at all, had said it, Kara had been blindsided.

There were so many different ways to be human.

What Kara had realized, eventually--mostly thanks to Alex, who stubbornly fought the generic representation of teenage girl that was everywhere--was that being human was a process, a complicated negotiation of expectations and preferences and self-discovery.

Sometimes she wondered whether it had been the same on Krypton. She remembered a quiet resistance to being in the science guild, an uncertainty as to whether she would be good enough, whether it was truly the right fit. But the Codex had said that was what her disposition was, so any questions she'd had were silent, internal. The Codex determined things on Krypton. What it said was how it was. But on Earth so little was predetermined, and even if one pathway was predetermined in one family, two miles away, a different family would have none of the same determinations.

Alex didn't like any of the things teen girls were supposed to like, at least not according to TeenCatCo. At first, Kara didn't understand why. The clothes were pretty, the music was enjoyable. Why was she so resistant to nice things?

Eliza agreed, which just made Alex give more exasperated sighs and slam more doors. It was confusing, and Kara, not yet ashamed to ask, kept pestering her, trying to make this make sense.

It all came to a head when Alex was trying on dresses for Junior prom. She was just going with a pack of friends, but Eliza and Kara had been thrilled by the prospect of getting her in a nice dress. Alex hadn't been thrilled, and with each dress, she just looked more and more uncomfortable and unhappy. They finally found one that both Kara and Eliza decided looked great on her, dark blue, long and strapless, and Kara had stared at the tumble of dark hair, the way the dress clung and fell and thought Alex looked like the models in CatCo Magazine. Alex hated it. Eliza had gone off, a bit exasperated, to look for shoes, and Kara had fought Alex on the dress. She looked so pretty. Why didn't she want to look so pretty?

"But why? Why don't you like it?"

"I don't know!" Alex finally yelled. "It just feels wrong." She thumped her chest. "When I see myself it just feels wrong in here."

Kara had sagged under the fierceness of her words. Because she understood, of course she did. The pretty dresses and bright colors faded from her eyes, everything seeming softer, darkening, drawing out the shades of red. She looked at her hands. "All right," she'd said.

Alex had gone stiff under her touch as Kara moved to unzip her. "Kara," she said, her voice taking on the softness that it had only recently started to show when they spoke. "If you really like it--"

"No, it's not that." Kara rested her chin on Alex's shoulder and put her arms around her waist. Alex softened in her clasp. "You look beautiful. But, that's not important."

"What is important, Kara?"

"I just, I know how you feel." Kara swallowed. "Everything on Earth feels wrong to me. But this is your home. You shouldn't have to feel that way too."

Alex came back and got the dress. She wore her leather jacket over it the whole time, but at the end of the night she came into Kara's room and lay on her bed, letting the skirt of the dress wrinkle up under her, and smiled as she told her about her night. "Wearing the dress was kind of scary, and I felt super uncomfortable at first. But, then I sort of forgot I was wearing it at all. When I went into the bathroom and I saw myself in it in the mirror, I didn't _not_ look like myself, but I also didn't look like 'just' myself. I guess this is just another way to be me."

They curled up on the bed together, and Alex let her play her Girls Aloud CD, and with Alex's arms around her and vibrant pop music in her ears, she didn't feel like her old self, but she didn't feel wrong either. A different way to be Kara. That's just what this was.

#

When Alex came out, the hardest part had been seeing her fear, as if she expected Kara to question her process of self-discovery, as if she was waiting for rejection. But Alex was always waiting for rejection. Nothing would make Kara reject her, nothing would make her doubt Alex, clearly not something unimportant like this.

Unimportant . . . or terribly important. Kara's words haunted her, _I want you to find love and be happy_. Kara hadn't really ever felt what it was like to risk her heart. She'd always kept herself restrained, never reached out and thrown her affections at someone and had it miss and shatter like an egg, albumen all over the sidewalk. But she'd told Alex to take that risk, that she _should_ take that risk. Holding Alex as she cried was the first moment where Kara knew, really knew, felt it deeply, that she was so glad Alex had saved her from the void of space. Telling Alex to risk her heart and not being there for her? How cruel would that have been? She didn't want to imagine that.

She hadn't been sure of Maggie at first--even after Alex had admitted that they'd made up and they might kinda-sorta be dating now. She didn't like how Maggie made Alex act, all distracted and confused. She was just a pretty girl. Alex wasn't supposed to be so messed up by a pretty girl. This was Alex, sturdy and reliable and badass, even when she was crumbling inside.

It was awful to realize that her reactions to being Maggie weren't ones of happiness. They were fear. Alex being afraid always made Kara more afraid than anything could. Slowly the fear started to dissipate, and Alex started to act more like herself again, wry jokes and well-intentioned scolding. With the return of her sister, the mirroring fear in Kara also started to fade.

#

Kara still wasn't quite sure about Maggie. She was guarded, and Kara got that people had reasons to be guarded--seriously, Maggie might be guarded but she didn't have a patch on Lena Luthor who _never_ exposed anything real about herself if she could help it--but the guardedness didn't make Kara more eager to trust Maggie with her sister.

She understood what had drawn Alex to her. Maggie had a certainty, a sense of right and wrong, a steadiness in how to see things, how to act in certain situations, that was attractive. She'd opened Alex's eyes to a different world, one where she wasn't the only human who loved an alien refugee, where being attracted to women was normal and something to be valued about herself.

Of course Alex would be attracted to someone who had a firm moral code that agreed with her own, but who was different in that she wouldn't break it for anything, not anger, not personal interest. _Personal isn't the same as important._ That wasn't something either Kara or Alex understood. Alex would do anything for the people she cared about, though those people were few and far between. And Kara had a hard time remembering what was right when she was angry, when someone had done something unconscionable. But Maggie was different. She couldn't help but admire that.

Still, Kara didn't think she'd really decided Maggie was okay until they'd gotten drunk together at the alien bar, and Maggie had let her guard down, just enough for Kara to get a glimpse of the sad mess she really was.

"Have you ever felt that way, how, when someone looks at you, gives you their full attention, and it just makes you feel like . . . like you're so much more than you were before?"

Kara swallowed, thinking of the way Ms. Grant had looked at Supergirl. Those wide astonished eyes, all her snappishness falling away, astonished by her presence. It had been worth so much more than anyone else's admiration, because it was Cat, who was never astonished by anything.

"I know she's slumming it with me. I know she deserves . . ." Maggie shook her head and laughed into her beer. "I was _sure_ , for weeks, that she was dating you. You two have that intimacy and sister telepathy thing going on, but even without any of your showing up whenever she called and her being all, I'm always bet on Supergirl, I couldn't think of anyone else who would be good enough for her. I mean," Maggie waved vaguely at her. "Look at you, 10/10, superpowers, and so _good_ _._ You do so much for this city, for the humans and the aliens who live in it. You're really amazing, Kara. Why should Alex settle for anyone less than that kind of amazing?"

Kara, who had also been drinking, hugged Maggie then, a little too tight. The compliments made her feel warm, but not as much as just how right Maggie was. Alex deserved the best, better than the best. "Good," she said. "You remember that, okay? Alex is special. Specialler than anyone. And no one is good enough for her, not even me. But I'll let you have her--on a trial basis only--but only as long as you do what I do. You remember how special she is, and you try to be good enough. You have to try, every moment, to be good enough for her."

"Okay," Maggie choked out, literally choked, because Kara wasn't quite sober enough to manage her strength. "I can do that. Just please don't break my ribs."

Kara knew that whatever happened in the future, if there was any point at which she had to choose, she would be Team Alex, thick or thin. But that was why she liked Maggie. Maggie would do the right thing, while Kara would pick Alex over 'right' and 'good' one hundred percent of the time.

That was why right after Alex came out she'd flown home to Midvale to talk to Eliza.

#

Kara loved Eliza, knew that she was hurting and that sometimes she took her pain out on Alex. It was so hard to watch. But this time she couldn't stand by and watch it. She knew it was betraying a trust, but she also knew that Alex was the bravest person she had ever met, and she had thrown herself headfirst into this coming out process, without a girlfriend, without having even kissed a girl, just with a crush and a realization. And Kara didn't want Alex to get hurt more than she had already. So she'd told Eliza.

"I didn't want you to be shocked. Alex doesn't need that. She's always so scared about what you'll think, and since Jeremiah isn't here to be told, she'll always imagine the worst with that. I just-- I don't want her to be hurt by this. She deserves something in her life to be easy, doesn't she?"

Eliza had sat down at the table, put her head in her hand, and blew a breath out. "She's really . . ."

Kara nodded. "You don't-- I know her academics were so important to you, but not this, right? You're okay with this. Please say you're okay with this."

Eliza rubbed both her temples. "I--" She shut her eyes. "Do you remember that time we went dress shopping for her Junior Prom?"

 _Vividly_. "Mhm."

"That was the first time I wondered. Like, ever since she was a child I'd noticed things that weren't like what I'd expected my daughter to be like."

"Eliza--" Had she really always been a little disappointed in Alex because she wasn't how Eliza had expected her to be? It felt unfair. There wasn't just a single way to be human. Why did she expect Alex to fit one and only one of those ways?

"When you came and immediately seemed to take on all those attributes, it just became more clear that she was different."

Oh. Her fault again. Kara felt the words like a blow to the gut. "Eliza," she said again. "I was faking it."

Eliza looked up, puzzlement on her face.

Kara winced. "Nothing here made sense to me. I couldn't do what Alex did. I couldn't figure out what was right for me, because the whole planet was wrong. I went with the typical portrayal. And I didn't mind it, so I didn't have to look outside that. But it was never 'me'. 'Me' died with Krypton."

"I'm so sorry Kara."

Kara shook her head. "That's not what this is about. I just don't think there is anyone who's the typical girl, or the ideal girl according to what their parents want. If you love someone unconditionally, you have to love them for the self they create."

"This doesn't have anything to do with whether or not I love Alex."

"It kind of does." Kara heard the anger in her voice and pulled back with all her might. Eliza knew how strong she was, what she could destroy if she was out of control. And no matter how upset she was, she didn't want to scare her foster mom. She swallowed hard. "It does because when you question her choices, she questions them, and hates herself for not being able to do everything--be the person you want her to be as well as the person she knows she needs to be. But this isn't a choice. It's just a fact. So there is no point in questioning it or disagreeing with it. It will just make her unhappy. And if you love her, you want her to be happy. Don't you?"

Eliza bent her head. "I did wonder," she said. "When she went back and bought that dress I was relieved. I thought it was a sign that she was just slow to develop. I didn't want to have to deal with the need to change my expectations and hopes for her. I haven't dealt well with change since . . ." She shook her head. "She's an adult now, and it really isn't any of my business. I should just be happy, that she's discovered something about herself, and is embracing it. But it's just another way she isn't the daughter I'd expected her to be."

"I don't know about you, but I'd rather she be Alex than whoever you thought she'd be. To be honest, that girl sounds kind of boring." The words came out more cruel and sarcastic than intended. But this was Alex. And this was the first thing that Kara was sure wasn't her fault. Maybe Eliza's resistance to change was her fault, Jeremiah not being here to be a conciliatory voice was her fault, Alex choosing a military career over being her parents' clone might be her fault, but this wasn't. She didn't have to feel guilty about ruining this family's lives for once. Alex needed protection, and she would give it.

Eliza tensed. She'd heard the anger behind the careless words. She took a breath. "I'm glad you told me, Kara. You're right, Alex doesn't need me have a hard time with this. She needs me to be proud of her."

When Alex told her how it went down, the sting of guilt at betraying a trust was there, but the astonished happiness on Alex's face made it worth it.

#

Alex coming out had been a revelation about a lot more than just Alex.

The problem with Alex was that she wasn't very good at talking about her newfound lesbianism, and Kara had discovered an insatiable curiosity about the topic. It was a very human experience, discovering your sexuality, and Kara wanted to know the details. But when she asked Alex, Alex just clammed up.

"What was it like, when Maggie thought you were asking her out, but you weren't?" "What made you start to think that maybe it wasn't a crazy assumption?" "Did something change, about the way you saw the world, after you knew?"

Unless it was late at night when the shows started to drag, Alex would just make faces that looked like nothing so much as the ones she had made when she was a snotty fifteen year old who couldn't handle being asked how the toaster workedby an alien. But even if she didn't get an answer, Kara kept wondering. She would wander down the street, squinting through her glasses, trying to figure out how Alex saw things now. Did she look at girls in a different way? When she passed a young professional in knee high boots and a short jacket did she doubletake in admiration? Did she like skater girls in low slung jeans and snapbacks?

"What? No!" Alex yelped when she asked. "I don't cruise people on the street. Do you look at every guy you see and evaluate him for hookup potential?"

"Well, no." But Kara wasn't quite sure if she was sure if she was a good comparison. She was an alien, not a straight human girl. Maybe straight human girls did evaluate every boy for hookup potential. And maybe they just looked when someone had a nice smile, or if they were particularly eager for a hookup. How would she know? Her expert on human relationships was Alex, and, well, she now knew there might have been a glitch in her lessons on heterosexuality.

And now Kara looked--but not at guys. Girls were everywhere, stylish and cool and interesting. Even if Alex said she wasn't looking, surely she couldn't help _seeing_. A cute girl with a messy bun wearing a graphic t-shirt caught her looking and grinned back. Kara felt herself blush and scurried away, but the warmth stayed with her through the day. An amazingly put together woman with badass heels, her hair in velvet ropes twisted with white, was so distracting that Kara walked into a wall and knocked a chunk out of it. How did anyone focus when there were so many pretty girls around?

#

Livewire broke out again and suddenly fighting her was harder than she'd expected.

"Why do you feel like you need to do this? You're so--" Kara waved her arms helplessly. "You could do whatever you wanted to."

Livewire stared at her and then smirked widely. "Oh, honey. I wasn't wrong was I? You're playing for the girl's team now, aren't you?"

After Livewire's plot had been foiled but she'd escaped, Vasquez patted Kara's arm. "I feel like I should take you out for a drink."

"What? Why?"

"Getting left-footed by a hot lady villain is a rite of passage."

"I didn't-- I wasn't _left footed_."

Vasquez just pressed her lips together and waited.

Kara sank. "I think I could use that drink."

They went to the alien bar and Kara did shots until the discomfort and disappointment in herself for failing to catch--or change--Livewire faded. By then she was leaning limply on Vasquez's shoulder as she drank her second beer.

"Girls are pretty," Kara mumbled.

"Yep," Vasquez agreed. "Noticing that doesn't have to mean anything though, if that's something you're worried about."

Kara groaned. "Alex would kill me. She always hates it when I take her stuff."

"She would be snippy about it for ten minutes, and then she'd get over it."

"It doesn't matter unless I like-like someone, right? It's just perception, it's not reality."

Vasquez squeezed her shoulders. "You don't have to come out as bi, you don't have to come out at all. But maybe listen to what you told Livewire, you can do whatever you want to."

 _Maybe_ , Kara thought, as she snuggled into Vasquez's neck--which smelled so nice, and her arm around her shoulders was so gentle-- _Maybe I'd like to kiss a girl._

#

The same thought when she was sober made her panic a little. No, Kara told herself. Girls were pretty, but she didn't _like-like_ them. She appreciated the pretty. She liked the way they smelled. Ms. Grant had taught her how to evaluate a woman's outfit, and appreciate how much of an effort people put in, even with their differing senses of style and body types, and Kara admired them all so much. What a nice sight they were giving her, and she appreciated it even more knowing it was part of the magic of human self-expression.

Honestly, Kara still wasn't entirely confident with human fashions. It was the self expression part that was difficult. How did you express yourself through the language of clothes when you were always hiding? Even as Supergirl she was hiding, otherwise she'd never have let Winn make her suit. (If she'd dressed like a Kryptonian, she was sure people would think she was part of some cult. _And_ if she dressed like a Kryptonian, she'd have to face, every day, just how un-Kryptonian she really felt. The crest of El was bad enough, but seeing it everywhere had desensitized her a bit. She didn't know how she'd feel if she saw the crest of the house of In-Ze again.)

No, Kara loved girls, but she loved them so much because she admired them. Girls were amazing--discovering who they were, helping each other, finding ways to be strong and love themselves. That was all pretty super.

#

Kara's article on Lena Luthor had beenmagneted up on Alex's fridge. James had done the photoshoot that accompanied it personally, andall of the pictures of Lena were perfect, making her look like some kind of otherworldly being--those cheekbones and those eyes, and Kara stared at them and meeped.

Maggie walked up beside her and handed her a beer. "I know."

Kara flinched. "What?"

"Like, I know your sister is super proud of you and your articles, but she didn't need to stick up the entire photoshoot. I'm not protesting, because I like eye-candy as much as the next girl, but your sister keeps on missing the fact that she's as gay as nails. She's come out, and she's still missing it."

"How can she not notice? Girls are just so--" Kara waved her arms around. How was she supposed to explain the sudden breathlessness, the tumble in her chest? Kara couldn't ignore it, and Alex didn't even notice? Alex was the lesbian! "With guys, they can be handsome and well put together, and smiling men holding puppies gives me a warm feeling, and someone like James, who was so kind and looked at me like he knew my secrets--which, well, he did, and in retrospect that's not really that romantic--made me flustered to talk to. But I don't even have to talk to a girl to get flustered. I just have to look at her. Or smell her. I wasn't half so flustered around James as I was around Lucy. Lucy just smelled so _nice_. And if a pretty girl smiles at me, whatever I'm holding just goes _smash."_ Like her phone. Again.

Maggie was giving her a suspiciously amused smile.

"What?" Kara asked.

"Nothing." Maggie took a sip of her beer. "I was thinking of saying something, but I'm just not entirely sure if you want to hear that I, a practicing lesbian, feel exactly the same way."

Kara sagged. "Yeah. I'm not sure if that's what I want to hear either."

Maggie patted her arm. "It's okay, however you end up deciding. Maybe you just appreciate the fairer sex aesthetically. Maybe you're bi. Maybe gender isn't part of your attraction calculations."

Kara tipped her head to the side. "Is that an option for humans?"

"Totally."

The idea settled into Kara's stomach in a comfortable way, in a way that felt right, like so few things on Earth did. And yet, it also felt odd, because claiming that identity meant all of this was _attraction_ , not just admiration, not just liking. "I don't know."

"Not everyone is like your sister."

"Hm?"

"Alex is very self-analytical. Also, a scientist. She goes in and collects evidence with a purpose. She runs mental tests checking different variables. So when I proffered the hypothesis "maybe you're gay," she went home and worked through the math. Result, positive. But other people are a bit more experiential. Sometimes you've got to feel it to know if it's right. It's no fun to be used in a straight girl experiment, but no one is going to mind if you go to a club and dance with a girl, make out with a girl. Just try it. See if you like it."

Kara rubbed the back of her neck and sighed. That kind of human interaction had never been easy for her. Even when she'd been hopped up on RedK it had been a disaster. "Maybe."

"Look, Sunny D." Maggie put a hand on her waist and squeezed gently. "I came up with a pretty awesome epigram of life advice the other day, and it worked for me, so I will pass it on. Life's too short. We've just gotta kiss the girls we want to kiss."

Kara snorted. "Alex told me you said that. That is a terrible line."

"Hey!" Maggie pinched her, and then shook out her hand from the unexpected muscle strain she'd given herself. "It wasn't a line! Seriously though, if you don't want to be proactive about figuring out whether you're bi or pan or whatever, that's fine. There's no finals date coming up. But if you want to kiss a girl, ask, and if she says yes--which she will, Sunny Danvers, because you are _smoking_ \--" Maggie waved her hand in a once-over. "Then kiss her."

#

Lena Luthor was just as supremely terrifying in person as she was in photographs. Kara had felt bad about how flustered she got when Lena looked at her the first few times they met, because she'd thought it was because she was a Luthor. When her icy green eyes looked right through Kara, she was certain Lena saw her supersuit under her clothes, and also all her weaknesses, and just might be plotting to kill her.

Even after she'd been sure Lena's villainy was more aesthetic than actual, her stomach still flipped upside down every time they were in a room together. She'd berated herself for it. How can you still doubt her, physiology? Look at all she's done to fight her mother! She needs a friend!

In retrospect, the heat in her face and the tumble-dryer in her stomach were now a little more interpretable.

 _Oh no,_ Kara wondered _, was the villainess aesthetic her_ type _?_

"You're a little more scattered than usual, darling," Lena leaned closer on her pristine white leather couch, and put her hand on Kara's knee. "Is it something I've done?"

"No?" Kara squeaked. She could bounce bullets off of her body without a flinch, but Lena's hand on her leg triggered a cascade of sensation, hot as the sear of kryptonite. "I just--"

The smirk of amusement on Lena's face was just a little too evil. She enjoyed Kara's discomfort. And it was weird, all Lena had to do was show that she liked Kara to make her uncomfortable. With anyone else, them showing that they liked her made Kara feel good and happy, not hot and flustered.

This overt affectionateness had marked the tenor of their interactions recently, hadn't it? Lena showing up and earnestly asking her to the gala, complimenting her with a wicked twitch of her eyebrows, sending her way too many flowers. But the hard part was that Kara couldn't tell if she meant it.

When Lena hugged her, the heat of her body, the way the tension had slipped away, and she'd clung just for a moment too long--that had felt real. But when Lena was talking?

She flipped so quickly from hergood mood to the shadows when her family or her name was brought up. The only thing that was consistent about Lena was how much of a risk-taker she was. Whether it was challenging gangs with alien weapons, or letting herself be emotionally vulnerable, or playing mind games with her mother, Lena, careless of her own safety, dropped the bomb and then checked to see how the pieces moved. It made a normal conversation with her a little terrifying. What would she blow to smithereens next? And what was the ultimate goal of all her gambits and power-moves?

There had to be something. Every move she made felt calculated. Even now. The steady eye-contact, the hand on her knee--Lena was pushing, but what was her desired endgame?

"I've just . . . been thinking a lot recently."

"Oh really?" Lena removed her hand, scooted closer on the couch and rested her elbow on its back, propping her head up in a 'listening' position. "Do tell."

Kara's face felt hot. _Left-footed_ , that was what Vasquez called it. "I don't really know. I just-- ever since my sister came out, I've just been kind of confused."

There was the tiniest ever flinch at that. "About what?" The warmth had slipped from her tone, and it felt, weirdly, like one of the realest reactions she'd gotten from Lena. _That_ was interesting.

"About girls."

Lena's expression froze into an unreadable mask. "Girls?"

There was something here. Something under the game, so Kara kept talking. Maybe she'd find out something about Lena that made sense.

"I mean, I've always admired girls, you know? Girls are so strong, and I love it when a girl succeeds, and Ms. Grant really made it clear just how hard it is to be amazing and female on this plan--" she choked. "--in this society." No response from Lena, which was more suspicious than if there had been one. "And then my sister was like: Hi. So. I'm attracted to girls. And I was blindsided! Like, oh, that's a thing? And then I was confused by my own confusion. Why hadn't I thought about it? Why hadn't I wondered? And honestly, Alex is terrible about being attracted to girls. When I tell her about the gorgeous and funny and interesting girls I see and meet, she just snaps at me and blushes. And then I just got more confused, because I kept thinking that if I were into girls, I don't think I'd be able to walk down the street without falling over myself at all these pretty girls. And then, well, it started to be pretty hard walking down the street."

Lena's eyes were wide now. The artfulness had gone out of her posture. It looked like she was holding her breath, like someone was waving around a present that held exactly what she wanted, and he was getting ready to read the tag, and if it didn't say her name she might just die.

"I never thought it might be me too, that I could also be attracted to girls. And what is attraction? How do you know if it's really attraction? And Maggie was like, you've gotta kiss some girls, honey, and that made sense, right? If I wanted to kiss these girls I admired so much maybe then it's attraction. But how do you find a girl who wants to kiss you? How do you go about kissing a girl? How does any of this actually work?"

"Let me . . . let me get this--" Lena hesitated. Her voice was weirdly scratchy and higher than usual. Her elbow was still propped on the back of the couch, but her head wasn't leaning on her hand anymore. She held it straight up, and her hand, now free, opened and closed on nothing in midair. "--straight is probably not the word."

Kara's body went stiff. Was this coming out to someone? Had she just come out to Lena Luthor? Oh no. She'd been trying to get _Lena_ to admit a truth, and she ended up babbling out all of the things she'd been thinking about.

"You . . . want to kiss a girl. As an experiment?"

"Well, not as an _experiment_ ," Kara said. Maybe that was the right term? It just felt awfully clinical. "I want to kiss a girl, because I want to kiss a girl. But it might be important information about what else I might want?"

Lena took a rather ragged breath. "And these thoughts and feelings are new for you?"

"Not the thoughts and feelings so much, but the idea that they might mean something?" Kara offered. Lena was still acting oddly. Her heartbeat was too fast for relaxing on a sofa. But all her actions felt real now--reactions, not moves. She liked it. Lena was always so controlled unless shit was actually going down. And now she was tense and flustered and _herself_ , and for once Kara didn't feel like she'd accidentally become a pawn in a game of wizarding chess.

"I see," Lena said. Then she bit her lip. Without the persistent eye-contact it was a much more worried gesture. It was still cute.

There were a lot of gorgeous women in the world, but Lena Luthor was definitely one of them. She always wore such interesting lipstick. It probably tasted terrible, but Kara found herself licking her lips anyway. Not that Lena would ever be interested, not if she was already this uncomfortable with Kara saying she might be into girls.

 _Oh._ That was a reasonable reading of this. She'd talked her way into making one of her few friends be uncomfortable around her. Kara's shoulders sagged. "It's just hard. I don't know how any of this works. And I don't know if it will matter later. But what if it does and I miss my chance to find out?"

"Kara," Lena's voice was soft. Her hand once again closed over Kara's knee. Kara looked down at it, and then up to meet Lena's eyes. Lena's gaze was steady, unblinking. "If you were at all interested, I, for one, and I am sure I am not alone, would gladly offer myself up upon the altar of your experience."

Kara froze. "Wh-what?"

Something did not compute. Why were humans so complicated?

"If you--" Lena pointed at Kara's chest. "--Kara Danvers, would like to kiss a girl, and if that girl being me--" She pointed at herself. "--suspicious Luthor with mysterious intent and mother issues, is not a problem, I would seize the opportunity gladly."

Kara stared at her. "You want to kiss me?"

Lena huffed out a laugh and covered her eyes. "Yes. Only since the day I met you."

"You like girls?"

A quirk of an eyebrow. "Have you really never read _any_ of the hack-jobs the Daily Planet did on me?"

Kara huffed. "I don't give biased journalism the time of day."

And then Lena was smiling, wide and pleased, like she did whenever Kara came off as too idealistic for her own good. It felt different this time. Warmth built in Kara's chest. Her cheeks were probably glowing.

"I would, you know," Kara said, her voice coming out soft and a little shy.

"Mm?"

"I'd like to kiss you."

"Truly?" Lena's voice was also soft. Her hand reached out, and her fingertips brushed just under Kara's chin, enough to lift it and turn her head a fraction to the side facing her. "That's a wonderful thing to hear."

"It is?"

"It is." And then Lena was close, the scent of the expensive perfume she wore almost overwhelming, her steady strange eyes definitely overwhelming, and Kara's heart was pounding at wild rates and she licked her lips again, and then she leaned in too.

A press of lips, gentle, the slight scratch of Lena's nails against the skin of her neck, the bump of her glasses as they came dislodged from the bridge of her nose,--it was molten, the sensation of liquid heat spreading through her, running through her veins.

 _Oh_ , Kara thought, as Lena broke the kiss, but didn't move away, her breath still hot and humid on Kara's lips. _Yes. I really do like girls._

And she buried her fingers in the thick mass of Lena's hair and kissed her again.

###


End file.
